


i will be a gun, and it's you i'll come for

by Dneiyf



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, hannibal is a bad dude and does bad things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 22:50:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1705469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dneiyf/pseuds/Dneiyf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Newt doesn't always think things through. Sometimes, there are consequences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i will be a gun, and it's you i'll come for

Newton Geizler had never claimed to be a clever man- no, that wasn’t true. He’d claimed to be far more than clever because he knew he was, he was a rock star, he was brilliant. However, in retrospect he might admit to certain people that he tended not to think his decisions through as much as he should, especially when it came to the kaijuu. But if he didn’t take the initiative sometimes, there wouldn’t be any kaijuu left to study, not even bits and pieces of them.  
That’s how he rationalized agreeing to talk to Hannibal Chau. And that’s where the trouble started.

 

Chau is largely unimpressed with the biologist that talked too fast and too loud, giving him a cursory glance when he comes in and then letting him ramble about whatever it was he was after. It’s only when the man says he needs another brain that Chau’s interest is peaked.  
“What do you mean, another one? What did you do to the first one?” he asks, and the kid’s lips quirk.  
“I can’t tell you that, classified stuff, you know. It is pretty cool though, so I might tell you- I’m gonna tell you.”  
Chau’s intrigued by the time the kid stops talking, taken aback for the first time in a long time by how little the scientist seems to realize who he’s dealing with. When the alarm goes off he plays with the idea of bringing the kid along- for a PPDC lackey he’s sharp as a tack, and the gangster can think of more than a few ways to keep his mouth busy if he gets too talkative.  
There’s an idea. Hannibal smiles, and tells the kid to get lost, he’s got places to be, and this shuts the scientist up fast.  
“Y-you’re sending me out there?” he stammers and Chau kind of wants him to survive just so he can make him stutter like that again. Before he forces the scientist out he asks his name, and makes a note of it for later. Geizler. Newt.

 

When Newt comes back to the shop he looks like he’s had a religious experience, or a brush with death- maybe both. And he calls Chau a bitch and Chau just smirks, wraps an arm around his shoulders and leads him to the back of the shop to make him an offer.  
Newt says no, at first. Then he says no again, he’ll get his damn brain somewhere else but they both know that’s a lie. And then he’s thinking of Hermann, who told him that he was insufferable the first time they met and who called him an imbecile when he came back from drifting with the hivemind, but in a way Newt could tell he had been scared to death. Hermann, who was so sure that his numbers spelled out the way he was doomed to die but still fell asleep with equations on his lips and Newt knows he’d do what needed to be done, if their positions were reversed.  
Newt says yes.

 

When they win, Hermann smiles at Newt for the first time since they’ve met and Newt knows he did the right thing. He kisses the mathematician when they’re stumbling back to their rooms, and it feels like he finally fits into place. They fall asleep with their foreheads touching, arms wrapped around one another and Newt can feel it in his bones when Hermann trails a finger around Trespasser’s teeth.  
He’s gone by the time Hermann wakes up.

 

Hannibal smiles with too many teeth when Newt walks in, like he’s gotten a present, and Newt wonders- not for the first time- if this was a bigger mistake than he had thought. He’s given a lab though, and enough kaijuu parts that he gets a little teary-eyed, but when he turns to tell Hermann how much fun he’s going to have, it’s Hannibal standing there watching him. Newt’s face drops and Chau’s eyes narrow when the scientist turns his back.  
“Something you missing kid?”  
Newt starts like he’s forgotten exactly who he was dealing with and smiles with too many teeth, but on him it’s a scared smile, like an animal trying to frighten off a predator. It’s a good look on him, Hannibal thinks, and then he leaves the man to his work.

 

Two months in and Newt thinks he’s going to lose his mind if he doesn’t go outside soon. Three months in and it starts to show in his work. Four months, and Hannibal is losing patience with the kid. He calls him down late one night and when Newt stumbles in it’s clear he hasn’t been sleeping.  
“Jesus kid, look at you. What the hell’s the matter with you?” Hannibal snaps, striding forward and grabbing Newt’s chin with one strong hand, examining the bags under his eyes and the red ring around his left iris, still strong months after he last drifted.  
Newt shakes under the larger man’s gaze and shrugs, hands twisting as he shifts from leg to leg. “No, you don’t just shrug this off,” Chau snarls, pulling Newt forward by his shirt collar and tilting his chin up.  
“You don’t get to do this to yourself, you hear me? You are mine.”  
Newt gets a sick sort of thrill from that, stark relief against the buzzing that’s constant in the back of his skull, just under the surface of his conscious. It’s easier to compartmentalize if he’s a thing, not a busy, complicated person with busy, complicated issues. Hermann would probably have had something snippy to say about disassociation, but Newt doesn’t let himself think about that. Instead he thinks about breathing until Hannibal shoves him against a wall and pushes him onto his knees; then he thinks about nothing at all.

 

It becomes a regular thing between the two of them. Newt works until Hannibal calls him down, and then he works in a different way and then, sometimes, he sleeps. Usually though, he lies awake and tries to not to feel the persistent push of the hivemind at his barriers, the dull emptiness where a certain mathematician had once taken up residence.

 

Newt realizes he hasn’t been outside in almost a year with a detached sense of wonder. Sometimes he goes up to the storefront when he has customers to impress for Chau, but never outside and never alone. Some part of him thinks there’s something off about that, but the rest of him thinks about the bruises he gets when Hannibal is happy with him and doesn’t want to think about what he gets when he’s in trouble.  
“Uh, dude? Sir, I mean, sorry.” He’s stumbling over his words like he hasn’t for a long time, like he’s back in college with too many ideas and not enough breath to get them all out. Hannibal glances down at him as he ties Newt’s hands to the headboard and makes a vague noise of acknowledgement, which Newt takes as permission to keep talking.  
“So not that this isn’t, you know, great and stuff-“ he cuts off as the other man runs smooth fingers over the raised scars on his chest and knows if he doesn’t say something now, he’ll lose his chance.  
“But I was kind of maybe wondering if I could go with you next time you head out?”  
That makes Hannibal pause, and Newt thinks he’s made a mistake, overstepped another boundary line he was too thick-headed to see, but then the older man is smiling into the curve of Newt’s neck and he trembles.  
“I’ll make you a deal.”

 

Newt is shaking again when they come to his lab to pick him up and he argues for a good ten minutes with Hannibal as to whether he’s fit to leave or not, but Newt has never been one to lose an argument. As per the agreement, he’s flanked by two of Hannibal’s thugs and has a thick band around his neck, with foreign words carved into the leather that he’s sure don’t mean anything good. His stomach roils when Hannibal takes his arm and leads him upstairs, and for a moment he isn’t sure fresh air is worth all of this.  
They step outside, and he remembers the stars.

 

The pounding in his head is worse the longer Newt is outside, like someone knocking to get into his brain again and he almost has to stop, sit, cover his head and pretend no one can see him but he knows he can’t do that anymore, and so he walks. Hannibal seems on edge tonight too, holding Newt’s wrist in a death grip, as if he knows there’s something happening that he can’t control. They make it to their destination, a nondescript-looking bookstore, without incident even though Newt thinks his head is going to split straight down the middle.  
“Don’t cause trouble,” Hannibal growls low in Newt’s ear, and then he’s disappearing into a back room. Two of his men remain, watching the biologist with varying levels of disinterest. He waves and they turn back to their conversation, leaving him to rifle through the books that caught his eye. The bell above the door rings as someone comes in and then Newt is on the floor, pupils blown wide and nose bleeding and someone is saying his name.  
“Are you alrigh- my God. Dr. Geizler, Dr. Geizler- Newton!”  
They’re on the other side of the dividing bookshelf, and the men stationed to watch Newt can’t see him, and seem not to have heard him fall. He’s trembling, but he manages to press a finger to the newcomer’s lips, smeared with blood just like his.  
It takes him a long, shaky second to put two and two together, and then he’s panicking and motioning for the man to get up.  
“Hermann, you need to leave.”  
The other man looks manic, face taut with anger and confusion, but not at Newt, not like he was used to.  
“Where have you been? Do you realize how long you’ve been gone? What is-“ Hermann stops as he fingers the collar – because that’s what it is, Newt won’t lie to himself- around Newt’s neck, and looks at the man sprawled under him with new eyes. “Who are you here with?”  
Newt looks at the only person he’s ever cared about more than himself, and points toward the door again. “You can’t stay here, he’ll kill you.”  
“And what will he do to you if I leave you?”  
A laugh bubbles up in Newt’s throat, almost hysterical, and he shakes his head. “Nothing – I’m a rock star.”  
That makes the muscles in Hermann’s neck go tight, and Newt wants to reach out and touch him, make sure he’s actually there. He keeps his hands firmly at his sides; there’s no use trying to hold on to what he can’t keep. They stay there for a moment longer, looking at each other, each trying to say a year’s worth of words in a glance, and then they can hear Hannibal laughing as he comes back.  
“Go!” Newt hisses with surprising venom, shoving Hermann to the door. Before he leaves, Hermann turns to him and, with more conviction than Newt has ever heard in his voice, promises, “I’ll come for you.”  
Then he’s gone, and Newt is crying when Hannibal pulls him to his feet.

 

Hannibal knows someone saw Newt, someone who wasn’t supposed to even know the biologist was still in Hong Kong, and he wants to tear something to pieces – he wants to make someone bleed.  
Newt won’t say a word to anyone on the way back, doesn’t answer the medical staff that cleans him up and resolutely press his lips into a line when Hannibal pulls him into his room.  
“Kid, who did you talk to? Was it some PPDC grunt?”  
Silence.  
“Newt, damn it, answer me! One of those Jaegar pilots?”  
Silence.  
“Who then? That doctor you worked with, the one with a stick up his ass?”  
Newt clenches his fists, just for a fraction of a second, but it’s enough for Hannibal to make the connection with the nosebleed, the headache- he isn’t stupid- Newt had been closer to his Drift partner at the bookstore than he had been in months.  
“He’s got no place in your head anymore, kid. Forget him.”  
Newt moves to punch Hannibal at that, but the larger man is no stranger to attack, and he’s got Newt pinned against a wall in one swift movement.  
“Don’t you try to hit me, boy. You’ll be in over your head.”  
Newt laughs at that, and spits back “Oh, so I’m not over my head now? What do you call this then, sir?” There’s derision in his tone, and Hannibal doesn’t tolerate disdain, not from anyone and certainly not from this tattooed little punk.  
He teaches him a lesson.

 

Newt stays inside from then on out. He goes from his lab to his room to Hannibal’s quarters, but nowhere in between and he keeps his head down when he walks the hallways. He spends the nights facedown in Hannibal’s mattress, and drafts up tattoos in his mind to cover up the bruises he walks out with.

 

Four months and twenty-six days after Hermann told Newt he would come back for him, he makes good on his promise. There isn’t much left of the PPDC by then, but Hermann calls some friends and pulls some strings and when they go to face Chau’s gang, they go prepared.  
It’s not Hermann who finds Newt, and the biologist thanks whatever gods might be listening for that. Instead, it’s Mako who kicks down the door to Hannibal’s bedroom, Mako who finds him bound to the headboard, Mako who promises she won’t tell anyone about it, and it’s Mako that holds Newt until he stops shaking.  
She talks to him like he’s going to run from her, and for the first time Newt hears uncertainty in her voice when she asks if she can leave him alone for a minute, she’s going to find him something to wear. He’s nodding before he really processes what she’s saying and when she leaves he can feel his chest tightening; he watches and waits for the door to open, for it to be Hannibal coming back for him and when Mako comes back he almost screams.  
She crouches in front of him and helps him into the shirt she had come back with, then turns around respectfully when he pulls on his pants. Newt feels like he should say something, but then she’s talking into a cell phone and pulling him to his feet, frowning at his wince. “We have to go now, Newt. They’re buying us time.”

 

They make it outside without incident, surprisingly enough, but Newt only lets himself feel relief once they’re in the car, and then everything happens too fast for him to think.  
The rest of his rescuers meet up with them at Mako and Raleigh’s apartment, and Newt can barely handle so many people in the room with him at once, but they give him space as they settle down. His muscles are taut with anxiety, even after they’ve collectively calmed down from the fighting, and the group falls protectively into place around him while they plan what to do next. Hannibal had been worryingly absent during the chaos, and while most of them agreed they couldn’t send Newt out of the country unnoticed, he most certainly couldn’t stay anywhere alone.  
Hermann laughs from the corner of the room when Tendo says he has a spare room, and when Newt turns questioningly towards him Hermann rolls his eyes as if the group has missed something obvious. “He’ll be staying with me, of course.” For all that Newt is taken aback, no one else seems surprised, and so when they agree he agrees.

 

The first night he stays at Hermann’s, Newt wakes up screaming. The second night it happens again, and the third night, and the fourth. He doesn’t sleep for the next day and a half, and it’s clear enough to Hermann that he has to do something. That night he pulls Newt up from the kitchen table and pushes him towards his bed; the other man is laughing and chattering nervously until he’s on the mattress, and then he quiets down immediately.  
Hermann knows he’s made a mistake then, trying to manhandle Newt into doing things like he had done before, with sharps words and physical contact. It isn’t until he tries to stop himself from touching Newt that he realizes how much they had touched when they worked together- it had seemed only natural for the other scientist to wipe the chalk from his face, or for him to place a steadying hand on Newt’s shoulder when he got too excited. Now, trying to see the other man’s expression in the dim light of his room, Hermann thinks he may have been a bit too optimistic in regards to how easily they could leave the last year and a half behind.  
“Newton, I’m going to sit on the bed now,” Hermann says carefully, keeping his words slow and his tone even as he moves, and the other man scrambles back so they don’t touch. They regard one another for a good minute before Newt forces his muscles to relax, and mumbles an apology as he makes himself lie still. There’s silence, and then Hermann is settling down beside him. They don’t touch and they don’t talk, but Newt can feel his heartbeat slowing as he tries to match his breathing to Hermann’s.  
He sleeps well for the first time in a long while.


End file.
